by None
More star shells lit the sky. It was beginning to rain. A crackle of machine-gun fire, and heavier artillery somewhere over to the left. Then the sharp whine of sniper fire, again and again.
Joseph shuddered. He thought of the men out there, beyond his vision, and prayed for strength to endure with them in their pain, not to try to deaden himself to it.
There were shouts somewhere ahead, heavy shells now, shrapnel bursting. There was a flurry of movement, flares, and a man came sliding over the parapet, shouting for help.
Joseph plunged forward, slithering in the mud, grabbing for the wooden props to hold himself up. Another flare of light. He saw quite clearly Captain Holt lurching towards him, another man over his shoulder, deadweight.
‘He’s hurt!’ Holt gasped. ‘Pretty badly. One of the night patrol. Panicked. Just about got us all killed.’ He eased the man down into Joseph’s arms and let his rifle slide forward, bayonet covered in an old sock to hide its gleam. His face was grotesque in the lantern light, smeared with mud and a wide streak of blood over the burned cork that blackened it, as all night patrol had.
Others were coming to help. There was still a terrible noise of fire going on and the occasional flare.
The man in Joseph’s arms did not stir. His body was limp and it was difficult to support him. Joseph felt the wetness and the smell of blood. Wordlessly others materialized out of the gloom and took the weight.
‘Is he alive?’ Holt said urgently. ‘There was a hell of a lot of shot up there.’ His voice was shaking, almost on the edge of control.
‘Don’t know,’ Joseph answered. ‘We’ll get him back to the bunker and see. You’ve done all you can.’ He knew how desperate men felt when they risked their lives to save another man and did not succeed. A kind of despair set in, a sense of very personal failure, almost a guilt for having survived themselves. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘Not much,’ Holt answered. ‘Couple of grazes.’
‘Better have them dressed, before they get poisoned,’ Joseph advised, his feet slipping on the wet boards and banging his shoulder against a jutting post. The whole trench wall was crooked, giving way under the weight of mud. The founds had eroded.
The man helping him swore.
Awkwardly carrying the wounded man, they staggered back through the travel line to the support trench and into the light and shelter of a bunker.
Holt looked dreadful. Beneath the cork and blood his face was ashen. He was soaked with rain and mud and there were dark patches of blood across his back and shoulders.
Someone gave him a cigarette. Back here it was safe to strike a match. He drew in smoke deeply. ‘Thanks,’ he murmured, still staring at the wounded man.
Joseph looked down at him now, and it was only too plain where the blood had come from. It was young Ashton. He knew him quite well. He had been at school with his older brother.
The soldier who had helped carry him in let out a cry of dismay, strangled in his throat. It was Mordaff, Ashton’s closest friend, and he could see what Joseph now could also. Ashton was dead, his chest torn open, the blood no longer pumping, and a bullet-hole through his head.
‘I’m sorry,’ Holt said quietly. ‘I did what I could. I can’t have got to him in time. He panicked.’
Mordaff jerked his head up. ‘He never would!’ The cry was desperate, a shout of denial against a shame too great to be borne. ‘Not Will!’
Holt stiffened. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said hoarsely. ‘It happens.’
‘Not with Will Ashton, it don’t!’ Mordaff retorted, his eyes blazing, pupils circled with white in the candlelight, his face grey. He had been in the front line two weeks now, a long stretch without a break from the ceaseless tension, filth, cold, and intermittent silence and noise. He was nineteen.
‘You’d better go and get that arm dressed, and your side,’ Joseph said to Holt. He made his voice firm, as to a child.
Holt glanced again at the body of Ashton, then up at Joseph.
‘Don’t stand there bleeding,’ Joseph ordered. ‘You did all you could. There’s nothing else. I’ll look after Mordaff.’
‘I tried!’ Holt repeated. ‘There’s nothing but mud and darkness and wire, and bullets coming in all directions.’ There was a sharp thread of terror under his shell-thin veneer of control. He had seen too many men die. ‘It’s enough to make anyone lose his nerve. You want to be a hero – you mean to be – and then it overwhelms you –’
‘Not Will!’ Mordaff said again, his voice choking off in a sob.
Holt looked at Joseph again, then staggered out.
Joseph turned to Mordaff. He had done this before, too many times, tried to comfort men who had just seen childhood friends blown to pieces, or killed by a sniper’s bullet, looking as if they should still be alive, perfect except for the small, blue hole through the brain. There was little to say. Most men found talk of God meaningless at that moment. They were shocked, fighting against belief and yet seeing all the terrible waste and loss in front of them. Usually it was best just to stay with them, let them speak about the past, what the friend had been like, times they had shared, just as if he were only wounded and would be back, at the end of the war, in some world one could only imagine, in England, perhaps on a summer day with sunlight on the grass, birds singing, a quiet riverbank somewhere, the sound of laughter, and women’s voices.
Mordaff refused to be comforted. He accepted Ashton’s death; the physical reality of that was too clear to deny, and he had seen too many other men he knew killed in the year and a half he had been in Belgium. But he could not, would not accept that Ashton had panicked. He knew what panic out there cost, how many other lives it jeopardized. It was the ultimate failure.
‘How am I going to tell his mam?’ he begged Joseph. ‘It’ll be all I can do to tell her he’s dead! His pa’ll never get over it. That proud of him, they were. He’s the only boy. Three sisters he had, Mary, Lizzie, and Alice. Thought he was the greatest lad in the world. I can’t tell ’em he panicked! He couldn’t have, Chaplain! He just wouldn’t!’
Joseph did not know what to say. How could people at home in England even begin to imagine what it was like in the mud and noise out here? But he knew how deep shame burned. A lifetime could be consumed by it.
‘Maybe he just lost sense of direction,’ he said gently. ‘He wouldn’t bethe first.’ War changed men. People did panic. Mordaff knew that, and half his horror was because it could be true. But Joseph did not say so. ‘I’ll write to his family,’ he went on. ‘There’s a lot of good to say about him. I could send pages. I’ll not need to tell them much about tonight.’
‘Will you?’ Mordaff was eager. ‘Thanks… thanks, Chaplain. Can I stay with him… until they come for him?’
‘Yes, of course,’ Joseph agreed. ‘I’m going forward anyway. Get yourself a hot cup of tea. See you in an hour or so.’
He left Mordaff squatting on the earth floor beside Ashton’s body and fumbled his way back over the slimy duckboards towards the travel line, then forward again to the front and the crack of gunfire and the occasional high flare of a star shell.
He did not see Mordaff again, but he thought nothing of it. He could have passed twenty men he knew and not recognized them, muffled in greatcoats, heads bent as they moved, rattling along the duckboards, or standing on the fire steps, rifles to shoulder, trying to see in the gloom for something to aim at.
Now and again he heard a cough, or the scamper of rats’ feet and the splash of rain and mud. He spent a little time with two men swapping jokes, joining in their laughter. It was black humour, self-mocking, but he did not miss the courage in it, or the fellowship, the need to release emotion in some sane and human way.
About midnight the rain stopped.
A little after five the night patrol came scrambling through the wire, whispered passwords to the sentries, then came tumbling over the parapet of sandbags down into the trench, shivering with cold and relief. One of them had caught a shot in the arm.
/> Joseph went back with them to the support line. In one of the dugouts a gramophone was playing a music-hall song. A couple of men sang along with it; one of them had a beautiful voice, a soft, lyric tenor. It was a silly song, trivial, but it sounded almost like a hymn out here, a praise of life.
A couple of hours and the day would begin: endless, methodical duties of housekeeping, mindless routine, but it was better than doing nothing.
There was still a sporadic crackle of machine-gun fire and the whine of sniper bullets.
An hour till dawn.
Joseph was sitting on an upturned ration case when Sergeant Renshaw came into the bunker, pulling the gas curtain aside to peer in.
‘Chaplain?’
Joseph looked up. He could see bad news in the man’s face.
‘I’m afraid Mordaff got it tonight,’ he said, coming in and letting the curtain fall again. ‘Sorry. Don’t really know what happened. Ashton’s death seems to have… well, he lost his nerve. More or less went over the top all by himself. Suppose he was determined to go and give Fritz a bloody nose, on Ashton’s account. Stupid bastard! Sorry, Chaplain.’
He did not need to explain himself, or to apologize. Joseph knew exactly the fury and the grief he felt at such a futile waste. To this was added a sense of guilt that he had not stopped it. He should have realized Mordaff was so close to breaking. He should have seen it. That was his job.
He stood up slowly. ‘Thanks for telling me, Sergeant. Where is he?’
‘He’s gone, Chaplain.’ Renshaw remained near the doorway. ‘You can’t help ’im now.’
‘I know that. I just want to… I don’t know… apologize to him. I let him down. I didn’t understand he was… so…’
‘You can’t be everybody’s keeper,’ Renshaw said gently. ‘Too many of us. It’s not been a bad night otherwise. Got a trench raid coming off soon. Just wish we could get that damn sniper across the way there.’ He scraped a match and lit his cigarette. ‘But morale’s good. That was a brave thing Captain Holt did out there. He wanted the chance to do something to hearten the men. He saw it and took it. Pity about Ashton, but that doesn’t alter Holt’s courage. Could see him, you know, by the star shells. Right out there beyond the last wire, bent double, carrying Ashton on his back. Poor devil went crazy. Running around like a fool. Have got the whole patrol killed if Holt hadn’t gone after him. Hell of a job getting him back. Fell a couple of times. Reckon that’s worth a mention in despatches, at least. Heartens the men, knowing our officers have got that kind of spirit.’
‘Yes… I’m sure,’ Joseph agreed. He could only think of Ashton’s white face, and Mordaff’s desperate denial, and how Ashton’s mother would feel, and the rest of his family. ‘I think I’ll go and see Mordaff just the same.’
‘Right you are,’ Renshaw conceded reluctantly, standing aside for Joseph to pass.
Mordaff lay in the support trench just outside the bunker two hundred yards to the west. He looked even younger than he had in life, as if he were asleep. His face was oddly calm, even though it was smeared with mud. Someone had tried to clean most of it off in a kind of dignity, so that at least he was recognizable. There was a large wound in the left side of his forehead. It was bigger than most sniper wounds. He must have been a lot closer.
Joseph stood in the first paling of the darkness and looked at him by candlelight from the open bunker curtain. He had been so alive only a few hours ago, so full of anger and loyalty and dismay. What had made him throw his life away in a useless gesture? Joseph racked his mind for some sign that should have warned him Mordaff was so close to breaking, but he could not see it even now.
There was a cough a few feet away, and the tramp of boots on duckboards. The men were stood down, just one sentry per platoon left. They had returned for breakfast. If he thought about it he could smell cooking.
Now would be the time to ask around and find out what had happened to Mordaff.
He made his way to the field kitchen. It was packed with men, some standing to be close to the stoves and catch a bit of their warmth, others choosing to sit, albeit farther away. They had survived the night. They were laughing and telling stories, most of them unfit for delicate ears, but Joseph was too used to it to take any offence. Now and then someone new would apologize for such language in front of a chaplain, but most knew he understood too well.
‘Yeah,’ one answered his question through a mouthful of bread and jam. ‘He came and asked me if I saw what happened to Ashton. Very cut up, he was.’
‘And what did you tell him?’ Joseph asked.
The man swallowed. ‘Told him Ashton seemed fine to me when he went over. Just like anyone else, nervous… but, then, only a fool isn’t scared to go over the top!’
Joseph thanked him and moved on. He needed to know who else was on the patrol.
‘Captain Holt,’ the next man told him, a ring of pride in his voice. Word had got around about Holt’s courage. Everyone stood a little taller because of it, felt a little braver, more confident. ‘We’ll pay Fritz back for that,’ he added. ‘Next raid – you’ll see.’
There was a chorus of agreement.
‘Who else?’ Joseph pressed.
‘Seagrove, Noakes, Willis,’ a thin man replied, standing up. ‘Want some breakfast, Chaplain? Anything you like, on the house – as long as it’s bread and jam and half a cup of tea. But you’re not particular, are you? Not one of those fussy eaters who’ll only take kippers and toast?’
‘What I wouldn’t give for a fresh Craster kipper,’ another sighed, a faraway look in his eyes. ‘I can smell them in my dreams.’
Someone told him good-naturedly to shut up.
‘Went over the top beside me,’ Willis said when Joseph found him quarter of an hour later. ‘All blacked up like the rest of us. Seemed okay to me then. Lost him in no man’s land. Had a hell of a job with the wire. As bloody usual, it wasn’t where we’d been told. Got through all right, then Fritz opened up on us. Star shells all over the sky.’ He sniffed and then coughed violently. When he had control of himself again, he continued. ‘Then I saw someone outlined against the flares, arms high, like a wild man, running around. He was going towards the German lines, shouting something. Couldn’t hear what in the noise.’
Joseph did not interrupt. It was now broad daylight and beginning to drizzle again. Around them men were starting the duties of the day: digging, filling sandbags, carrying ammunition, strengthening the wire, resetting duckboards. Men took an hour’s work, an hour’s sentry duty, and an hour’s rest.
Near them somebody was expending his entire vocabulary of curses against lice. Two more were planning elaborate schemes to hold the water at bay.
‘Of course that lit us up like a target, didn’t it!’ Willis went on. ‘Sniper fire and machine-guns all over the place. Even a couple of shells. How none of us got hit I’ll never know. Perhaps the row woke God up, and He came back on duty!’ He laughed hollowly. ‘Sorry, Chaplain. Didn’t mean it. I’m just so damn sorry poor Ashton got it. Holt just came out of nowhere and ran after him. Obsessed with being a hero, or he’d not even have tried. I can see him in my mind’s eye floundering through the mud. If Ashton hadn’t got caught in the wire he’d never have got him.’
‘Caught in the wire?’ Joseph asked, memory pricking at him.
‘Yeah. Ashton must have run right into the wire, because he stopped sudden – teetering, like – and fell over. A hell of a barrage came over just after that. We all threw ourselves down.’
‘What happened then?’ Joseph said urgently, a slow, sick thought taking shape in his mind.
‘When it died down I looked up again, and there was Holt staggering back with poor Ashton across his shoulders. Hell of a job he had carrying him, even though he’s bigger than Ashton – well, taller, anyway. Up to his knees in mud, he was, shot and shell all over, sky lit up like a Christmas tree. Of course we gave him what covering fire we could. Maybe it helped.’ He coughed again. ‘Reckon he’ll be mentione
d in despatches, Chaplain? He deserves it.’ There was admiration in his voice, a lift of hope.
Joseph forced himself to answer. ‘I should think so.’ The words were stiff.
‘Well, if he isn’t, the men’ll want to know why!’ Willis said fiercely. ‘Bloody hero, he is.’
Joseph thanked him and went to find Seagrove and Noakes. They told him pretty much the same story.
‘You going to have him recommended?’ Noakes asked. ‘He earned it this time. Mordaff came and we said just the same to him. Reckon he wanted the Captain given a medal. He made us say it over and over again, exactly what happened.’
‘That’s right.’ Seagrove nodded, leaning on a sandbag.
‘You told him the same?’ Joseph asked. ‘About the wire, and Ashton getting caught in it?’
‘Yes, of course. If he hadn’t got caught by the legs he’d have gone straight on and landed up in Fritz’s lap, poor devil.’
‘Thank you.’
‘Welcome, Chaplain. You going to write up Captain Holt?’
Joseph did not answer, but turned away, sick at heart.
He did not need to look again, but he trudged all the way back to the field hospital anyway. It would be his job to say the services for both Ashton and Mordaff. The graves would be already dug.
He looked at Ashton’s body again, looked carefully at his trousers. They were stained with mud, but there were no tears in them, no marks of wire. The fabric was perfect.
He straightened up.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly to the dead man. ‘Rest in peace.’ And he turned and walked away.
He went back to where he had left Mordaff’s body, but it had been removed. Half an hour more took him to where it also was laid out. He touched the cold hand and looked at the brow. He would ask. He would be sure. But in his mind he already was. He needed time to know what he must do about it. The men would be going over the top on another trench raid soon. Today morale was high. They had a hero in their number, a man who would risk his own life to bring back a soldier who had lost his nerve and panicked. Led by someone like that, they were equal to Fritz any day. Was one pistol bullet, one family’s shame, worth all that?